Intel Announcements at MWC 2011 Include Dual-SIMs, MeeGo Tablets and More

No company was busier on Day 1 of MWC 2011 than Intel, which had big news regarding their mobile plans for the rest of the year and beyond. Much of the news centered around their advancements in LTE tech, the cloud, and their new MeeGo tablets, which should be hitting stores this year. Unsurprisingly, Intel looks poised to be a major player in the newest mobile frontiers in the next few years.

Intel’s first announcement dealt with new Dual-SIM technology. It’s not completely uncharted territory, but the Dual-SIM market is still a very new one. It means what you would think: one phone with two functional SIM cards. The possibilities are mainly to provide the ability to have two phones in one, or, likely the more popular use, to make international roaming easier, without having to suffer sky-high international rates. Intel’s new Dual-SIM technology is just an improvement to speed and cost-effectiveness of the platform; nothing too exciting, but good news nonetheless.

Next, Intel touched on its high speed data network advancements. Their new HSPA+ platform, already available to developers, promises to offer true 21 Mbps downlink performance, and is smaller and more lightweight than competitors’. Also coming out of Intel today was its new LTE multimode platform; basically, an extremely slim modem for mobile phones, making mobile devices cheaper to produce and more lightweight. Both are Intel’s way of establishing itself in the 4G, LTE and HSPA+ generation of data networks. Once again, the big take-home message here was ease of use and lower costs for consumers and developers alike.

Intel also revealed the activity of its investment branch, Intel Capital. Intel put plenty of money into six companies’ pockets, and there are some interesting finds here. A heavy investment was made in a company producing Near Field Communication (NFC) technology – which means that using your mobile phone as a payment option in stores could be coming very soon. The other investments don’t provide much in the way of surprise. Big money is going into cloud services, semiconductor technology, multimedia delivery, and Android developers. Again, Intel seems to be entrenching itself with money and talent to position itself as a major player in the mobile market of 2011.